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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25017718">a heart in repair</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome'>Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cassian Andor-centric, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Heavy Angst, POV Cassian Andor, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, major character death is for most of the R1 crew</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 06:35:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,872</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25017718</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After yet another mission, Cassian is tired and in need of rest.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Cassian Andor/Leia Organa</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>a heart in repair</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The rain falls heavy on Cassian's jacket, rolling down his sleeves and onto his hands, staining the gloves he'd tugged over his fingers.  Cassian ignores the droplets, even though he knows here, on this forgotten planet, they’re not water, but a dark, oily substance that will take forever to wash away. It doesn’t matter. It has been a lifetime since his hands were clean.</p>
<p>It will be another lifetime, he thinks, before his heart is whole.</p>
<p>Slowly, he shoulders his sniper blaster once more, adjusting the familiar weight between his shoulder blades. The mission is complete, and soon, he will be able to return the weapon to its case on his ship. No. Not his ship. It belongs, like everything Cassian calls his, to the Rebellion. He will return to the ship, return to the base he has learned to call home.But he will not be able to return the fragment of his heart that had cleaved from its source the moment he’d pulled the trigger. A blaster took two lives when it was first fired, Cassian thinks. The life of the one the bolt hits, and the life of the one who had pulled the trigger.</p>
<p>It’s a discomforting thought, one that follows him, as insistently as a tracking drone, as he makes his way back down to the ravine where the shuttle was docked. Even though he knows that there is no one waiting for him, he still catches himself looking toward the cabin, where Kaytu used to sit.</p>
<p>There is no one there. Cassian hangs up his coat, noticing how the oily droplets slid off the fabric, landing on the floor of the ship like tiny, opaque, teardrops.</p>
<p>He still waits for the droid to reappear, as the droid had once waited for Cassian to return on missions. But the droid, like the others, like another part of Cassian’s heart, is gone forever, burned away like all of Scarif. A blaster could take one life at a time, but the Death Star had taken so much more from him.</p>
<p>Cassian knows that was the moment things shifted for him. No longer did he just fight for hope, though that still did flicker inside of him, a small luminescent spot in his otherwise dark thoughts. Now, he fought for justice, as well. He had lost his best friend, lost people that, though he’d known them for a short time, had become like family to him.</p>
<p>War takes so much from everyone it touches. Even before he'd joined the fight, Cassian had suffered loss. Now, though, his losses in so many ways, threaten to outnumber his hopes. He has lost so much and what scares him the most is that he still has more to lose.</p>
<p>Because though there is little of his heart left, he has trusted those last few shards of the once bright and beating treasure to--</p>
<p>“Leia?” he whispers her name as the shuttle’s indoor lumos flicker on, casting her gentle features into sharp relief. She is the type of beautiful that could look absolutely terrifying, if she chose, and never is that more apparent than when she stands in the shadows. She is a flower made of vibroblades, a lily that could strike a man down, a weapon and a gem, all at once.When she is dressed in white and stands on a royal dias, one might never know that side of her. But Cassian does. Knows that she is a fighter, as much as she is a princes. Knows that she too has performed the terrible calculations of life and death that can only be answered with a blaster bolt.</p>
<p>He knows all this, and yet, he still wishes he could protect her from everything. Cassian supposes that’s what love does to someone. Turns them illogical. Makes them try their hardest to do the impossible, like keep a military leader safe during a war.</p>
<p> The princess stands there, watching him, for a long moment. She's not dressed in royal garb now, rather, she wears a simple Rebel's uniform, though she is anything but simple. He tries to offer her a smile, but his muscles can't seem to remember how. She still hasn’t spoken. Instead, she moves forward, placing her cold hand on his cheek. He leans into the touch, though he’s not sure he deserves it. “Why are you here?” he whispers.</p>
<p>“I was worried about you.”</p>
<p>“You shouldn’t.” The words sound hollow and empty, as if they are a recording from a man long-gone.</p>
<p>“Don’t be silly,” she responds. Her free hand drops down, trying to reach for his. But he slides his fingers away from her touch.</p>
<p>“They’re dirty,” he whispers, though he’d discarded the fingerprint-masking gloves already.</p>
<p>“They look clean to me,” Leia replies. Her own hands are perfectly manicured, as soft as fresh snow, and just as cold. She must have been waiting in the shuttle for him for a long time.</p>
<p>“Many things, princess, are not as they appear.” Cassian moves away from her, turning to ease his aching body into the captain’s chair. “And I am chief among them.”</p>
<p>She perches on the console across from him, a small, sad, smile playing on her lips. “And me? Am I what I seem to be?”</p>
<p>His lips part, and he whispers, “no. Of course now.” She is a princess, a leader, a fighter. She is so much more than she seems. Cassian wishes, for a moment, that they were anywhere but here. That he was anyone but who he is. If only he could hold her in his arms and promise that it would all be okay, that he could keep her safe, that he would never leave on another shadowy mission.</p>
<p>“Then we make a matched pair,” she says. Her smile quirks upward, a tiny flash of happiness amid the gloom.</p>
<p>“That’s not what…”</p>
<p>“We are,” she says again. She leans forward, to kiss his forehead. “I love you, Cassian, for all that you are. There is not one imperfect part of you in my eyes.”</p>
<p>Something inside of him, something like an icy cage that had frozen over the little scraps of his heart, melts with the words. He too leans in, so his head rests against her shoulder. Breathing her in, he takes comfort in the scent of her perfume, the warmth of her skin. Breathing her in, he remembers a hundred better memories.</p>
<p>Her arms encircle his shaking shoulders, and Cassian begins to cry. It’s something he hasn’t done in a long, long time. Long enough that he nearly has forgotten how to. The tears fall from his eyes and feel less like rain drops and more like memories. Each one that runs down his face is one less fear, one less bitter fragment of a moment long gone.</p>
<p>Leia holds him. Her hand strokes his back, and he notices that she is warm now. He tries to take a deep breath, tries to stop his tears. She shakes her head. “Let it out, Cassian. It’s okay. I’m here for you.”</p>
<p>He’s been expected to be strong for so long. He’s forgotten how to receive comfort, though he is an expert at providing it. He’s forgotten how to take a small moment just for himself, to mourn all the could-have-beens that follow him like shadows.</p>
<p>But now, thanks to Leia, he remembers.</p>
<p> War takes much from all it touches, but love gives so much more back. He takes comfort in her warm presence, finds his emotional wounds healing as surely as if she had offered him bacta. Cassian’s heart rate slowly steadies, until he is ready to lift his head and look up at the woman who has all that’s left of his heart.</p>
<p>She smiles at him, carefully brushing away the last of his tears with her thumbs. “Thank you for trusting me,” she says softly. “I will always be here for you.”</p>
<p>“I… Leia, what if I cannot do the same for you?” It’s the question that haunts him. He hadn’t been there when she’d been captured. Hadn’t been able to save Alderaan. He’d failed her.</p>
<p>Cassian had loved her, and yet, he hadn’t been able to be there for her. In that, like in so many things, he had failed. “I cannot be there for you. Not always.” Because his missions would always come first.</p>
<p>“You are, though.” Carefully, she moves so she can curl up in the chair with him, now resting her head on his shoulder. Her long braid drapes over his arm. He holds her, as tight as he can. “You are always in my heart, Cassian, and that is enough for me.”</p>
<p>“You mean that?”</p>
<p>She nods. “Truly.”</p>
<p>He had never considered that. He only knew a heart could break, could crumble in slow-motion over long, dark years, like a forgotten ruin. He’d never thought a heart could hold something, or someone, close enough to provide light. Though now that he reflects on it, he realizes that he has held Leia in his own heart for a long time, himself. He’d thought of her in between his missions, kept memories of their time together close to his chest, like precious little treasures no one else could see.</p>
<p>“You are with me,” Leia says now. “Always.”</p>
<p>He takes her hand. He tries not to think of the terrible things his hands have done, the triggers they have squeezed, the bombs they have wired. Instead, he thinks of the skin they’ve caressed, the dark hair they’ve braided, the healing patches they’ve applied. His hands had done so much for him, for them both, and not all of it was bad.</p>
<p>He was not all bad. He needed to remember it. His heart was not all broken. Not yet. And things that were only mostly broken could always be repaired.</p>
<p>She says, “I could not have gotten through those days on the Death Star without you in my heart.”</p>
<p>“Then I…”</p>
<p>“You saved me, Cassian, as surely as if it was you who came to my cell.” She squeezes his hand, showing her strength, despite how delicate she seems, there in his arms.</p>
<p>Only then, does Cassian realize that his heart is no longer aching the way it had. It is bruised and broken, still, but amazingly, it has started, slowly, to heal. A heart, perhaps, can grow back, like a tree that has been trimmed to nearly nothing. “Then I am glad.”</p>
<p>He kisses her, shyly at first, until she meets his timidness with passion, awakening all of the deep love he has held at bay for a long time. The kiss sweeps them both away, gives them hope for a better life away, heals their wounds and warms their hearts She had been there for him when he needed her, and now he trusts her words, that he has always been there for her, as well. All his fears of failure, his disgust at his own shortcomings, seem so small in comparison to that knowledge. Instead, Cassian focuses only on the kiss, the touch, the warmth of the woman in his arms.</p>
<p>Love can change two lives. The person who offers it and the one who receives it.</p>
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